With the rise of cancel culture, it’s something that’s got me curious, why are so many works (music, literature, tv shows, etc.) no longer separated from their controversial makers? Is it purely to do with money (e.g. not wanting to give money to people you don’t agree with?) and what about controversial people who are dead? They don’t gain anything, so why isn’t the art separated from the artist? What’s your opinion on this topic?
If the artist gives 25% of their income to fund the orphan crushing machine, I’m incentivized to give them 0% of mine.
If someone sucks I think about that when observing their art. There is so much good stuff in the world by good people that I don’t see a need to support bad artists.
My personal opinion, it’s about not wanting to support evil. I really want to watch the Harry Potter series and listen to the full cast audiobook, but I don’t want to give money to Rowling to fund things that hurt transgender people. If it weren’t for that, I’d watch the series. I still love Harry Potter
Well take JKR, for example. You consume Harry Potter content and a portion of the royalties go to her. She then funds anti-trans movements like For Woman Scotland.
Thus, if you consume Harry Potter content you’re supporting anti-trans causes. Personally I can’t have that on my conscience.
Not if you don’t pay for it
i just find it hard to watch louis c.k. without thinking about him jerking off in front of his employees. it makes him less fun to watch i guess.
doesn’t help that alot of his comedy is also about jerking off
true story.
There’s a term I’m drawing a blank on just now that refers to one’s tendency/ability to think of things as separable. It’s something like high vs. low segmentation/delineation/compartmentalisation/discretion individuals. For some people, different aspects of a person/concept/etc. can be more readily separated in their consideration. For others, the associations are too strong to be ignored.
Some people have low (word I am having trouble remembering). These are people who cannot or have difficulty in separating different elements of consideration. These are people who say the only way to understand, say, The Lord of the Rings is to understand Tolkien, or that one cannot separate the mysogyny of Tomas from the music of Nightwish. They are also the kind of person who, if they met Ted Bundy in the office, would then have great difficulty reconciling that friendly experience with new information saying he was a murderer.
Some people are high (word). They split concepts frequently and easily. These are people who can look at things which are connected by being parts of the same whole but consider each part separately, like say, looking at the beliefs of Ted Kaczynski and saying he was right about this one technology but wrong about bombing as the optimal solution, or that it’s wrong to murder but eating the dead is fine. These are also the kind of people who are more capable of meeting someone, being their friend for years, trusting them, but still having the cognitive distance to see the evidence in front of them and realise their friend is abusing his daughter, even if that doesn’t comport with how they have previously seen that friend.
Each way of thinking is as alien to the opposing end of the spectrum as introverts vs extroverts or the religious vs materialists.
I can. After the artist has been dead for 50 years.
Ignore what everyone else says. They’re applying their own moral judgements to what is ultimately your own personal decision.
Whenever someone posts this they’re usually feeling guilty for enjoying the Harry Potter series. Personally, I can’t enjoy Harry Potter anymore because the author is transphobic and awful. It makes me sad to watch it anymore because of that. If I found out later that something I enjoyed is also made by an author I dislike, I similarly stop enjoying it.
You might think that’s silly, but think of it like Nestle. You can enjoy their chocolate, it’s genuinely good chocolate. But they’re one of the most evil companies on the planet. It’s your personal decision, nobody else’s, whether you’re willing to ignore that, and still eat their chocolate and support their business practices. It’s a psychological phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance.
As for dead people… it’s more nuanced. If it’s from 100+ years ago; basically everyone was racist etc back then, so it’s more a sign of the times changing. If they died yesterday, that doesn’t fly.
So my moral framework can be summarised as:
- I don’t like financially supporting evil
- I don’t like culturally supporting evil subtexts or evil authors
- Historical works get a pass
You’ll need to find your own moral framework, something you can work on and stand by with pride. Don’t just copy others’.
Separating the art from the artist is usually meant for academic settings when discussing works from people who were flawed (I’m using very mild language) or who we see through a modern lens as problematic. It’s how we can talk about the themes and IP that Lovecraft created despite him being a truly garbage human being in his life.
I think we have collectively co-opted the phrase to try and engage with entertainment we like when the artist is problematic. I think that’s generally okay if the artist is no longer alive or does not own the IP anymore.
If an artist is alive and actively a shitty person, then it’s not really possible to separate their art from them in my opinion (again, non-academically). Doing so can give money, clout, or other forms of power to further enable them. That’s why we’ve been seeing “cancel culture” grow, because boycotting is one of the few ways to limit an artist’s reach if they are using their art or status to hurt people.
As an aside, depending on the artist’s actions or reputation, it is genuinely seen as suspect to engage with their art outside of academia even if they are dead. This can be especially true if the art itself espouses dangerous or very hurtful ideas. A common example is stuff like Mein Kampf, which has been studied academically/historically in order to understand it. I think anyone would be wary of someone saying they are a fan of it though.
Came here to say almost exactly this.
Though, I do still consume some media made by people I dislike. I just torrent it :/ Some stuff, however, I will totally skip over, even beloved and deeply meaningful IP from my childhood, because it’s just not worth it to me to engage in some media, even if the author isn’t getting paid for, because of just how bad that author is.
“Separate art from artist” is one of those vague phrases that can mean very different things depending on context.
From a media analysis perspective, it can mean to simply evaluate the work on its own without considering who made it or authorial intent. Another way of saying Death of the Author. This is a valid lens of media analysis, but it should not be the only lens.
More often though it gets used as a way of saying “I’m just going to pretend any controversies surrounding the author don’t exist and enjoy it anyway.” Now I’m not going to tell anyone they can’t enjoy anything by problematic creators, because I certainly have my share of such works I still enjoy. I’m not pure and I think anyone who claims to be is lying.
But I still think it is necessary to acknowledge and engage with those controversies - especially when it comes to financially supporting such creators or boosting their platform. You have to decide for yourself where to draw the line, but you should make that decision without plugging your ears and sticking your head in the sand.
The worst way of using this phrase though, is when people use it to mean “You should pretend any controversies surrounding the author don’t exist, stop bringing it up, don’t even talk about it. I don’t want to do any introspection about it, so it makes me feel insecure when anyone else does.” When people try to use it as a conversation stopper in response to controversy, that’s complete bullshit.
Consider H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft was a hugely influential writer who spawned an entire subgenre of horror. He was also a horrible racist, and that puts his body of work in a different light when you recognize how much of it is ultimately about fear of Other.
As far as media analysis goes, it’s not like his work is inherently racist. Just because he was a bigot doesn’t mean his writing is. But his bigotry certainly did influence his writing, and it’s necessary to understand this to truly understand Lovecraft. Lovecraft is tied to his work in a way that can’t fully be separated.
From a financial perspective, Lovecraft is long dead, and all of his work has passed into the public domain. Reading his work won’t fuel further bigotry, and so I don’t think it’s something anyone has to feel bad about.
I think the most crucial part of the context in which a work was created is the mind it was created from. If that mind has the personality of an irredeemable asshole, that affects the way I perceive the art.
I’m more surprised that/if historically people separated the art from the artist. No art is created in a vacuum, their creators live in the world along with everyone else. I guess the only justification I can see if someone believes that art solely comes from divine inspiration or similar.
Don’t forget that Hitler was a painter. Have you been enjoying any of his pieces lately?
Why are conservatives always so upset at the consequences of a free market?
No idea, why is that?
You should try asking yourself how artists create art. Where did that art come from that you so badly want to disconnect from the artist’s mind that produced it? What ideas is the artist expressing that you’re choosing to ignore?
What ideas did the artist also hold that are the reason the rest of human society decided that this artists art did not need to persist?
For example - These are questions that anyone involved in anything “Lovecraftian” needs to answer for themselves.
I understand that, but it’s irrelevant. My point is: not all art is political. Just because some people say a particular piece is political, it doesn’t make it so.
My point is: not all art is political.
Everything is political. You have just lived such a privileged life that you haven’t been required to see why.
You have “just gotten” things throughout your life that others have had to fight for. And you now take it for granted that everyone has your same experience. Not everyone is so privileged because the people who operate the systems that benefit you, are taking far too much from others in order for you to have those privileges.
As soon as you start seeing the things that others are forced to do that you’ve never had to confront, then you will understand why everything is political. Then you will understand what a disservice you’re doing to your fellow man by not doing your part to ensure everyone else gets the privileges you already take for granted.
You don’t know my life, my hardships etc. don’t pretend you do.
You don’t know my life, my hardships etc. don’t pretend you do.
You thinking that’s what I’m doing is why I’m saying what I’m saying.
You haven’t yet matured to the point where you understand not everything everyone else says and does is about you. Other people live rich, detailed lives that are completely unlike your own and you will never understand the huge varieties of ways the world works until you get outside your own tiny, self-centered universe.
lol, you don’t know my personality, you don’t get to judge that level
You’re putting enough on display for us to know.
Can I ask you 1 final question?
I won’t go hungry without creative works, I always have a choice whether to engage with them. I consume them in order to feel an emotion. Those emotions can change and become tainted by controversies or the actions of the people involved, but not always. Because my relationship to the art is and always was about how I feel, if I don’t like the feelings it gives me I get rid of it.
If they use their money to do evil shit, like funding wars against queer people, then giving them money actively supports funding wars against queer people. That makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is throwing away/destroying decades old media becsuse it was discovered last week that the artist who made it was, in fact, a piece of shit. That’s not hurting them nor is it sending a message. Just don’t buy any new shit from 'em.
